Monthly Archives: October 2015

A special e-Learning Forum is planned for later this month on Thursday 29th October, 11.00 – 15.40. The subject is Flipping the Classroom and we have arranged a number of speakers. The event will be held in the Enterprise Zone on level 3 of the library.

Dr Alan Masson – Senior Manager, International Customer Success, Blackboard.Reimagining the flipped classroom?
This hands on interactive session will use recognised principles of assessment and feedback and educational interactions to articulate an aspirational vision for the educational design of blended learning / flipped classroom. This vision will then be used to inform the development of a learning design framework and patterns of Blackboard tools and resources to best address these educational requirements.

Dr Alan Masson is the Head of Blackboard International Customer Success. Previous to this role he was the Head of Technology Facilitated Learning at the University of Ulster where he led a number of national projects in the areas of Assessment and Feedback, Learning Design and Curriculum Enhancement. He has extensive experience of delivering assessment and feedback enhancement workshops to a range of UK Universities and has acted as a critical friend to the QAA to support the development of curriculum innovation toolkits. This workshop is part of an academic success initiative which is seeking to support Blackboard customers to get the best educational value and impact from their Blackboard investments.

Ms Sheila McNeill – UK Learning Technologist of the Year, 2013, Glasgow Caledonian University.What the Flip?
Flipped teaching approaches are becoming increasingly popular and are even being hailed as the future for all learning and teaching. More and more educators are flipping their classrooms, but there are many who are still unsure about what flipping actually means, how and what to flip in their contexts. As well as exploring the concepts of flipped teaching, this presentation will share an example of how a course team at GCU restructured their modules using a flipped approach. The team abolished lectures and moved to a more self directed and discursive workshop approach. This has led to increased engagement (and enjoyment) for both students and staff.

Sheila MacNeill is a Senior Lecturer in Blended Learning at Glasgow Caledonian University, where she works as part of a team who provide strategic direction, pedagogic guidance and practical support to staff embedding digital, blended online learning across the curriculum. Open-ness is at the heart of Sheila’s professional practice and she regularly blogs about her adventures and musing in and around the use of technology in education at www.howsheilaseesit.wordpress.com and can be found on twitter @sheilmcn. Before working at GCU, Sheila was one of the Assistant Director’s at Jisc Cetis, a national innovation support centre for the UK HE Sector. She was the ALT Learning Technologist of the Year 2013.

Dr Rhian Williams – English Literature, University of Glasgow.Poetry Podcasts
I will be talking about the ‘Poetry Podcasts’ project that she developed with then-colleague, Professor Kirstie Blair in 2011. The podcasts appear on iTunes and online and have received a significant number of ‘hits’. The project was aimed at school leavers and first year University students, but has scope for wider application.

Dr Rhian Williams is a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Glasgow, specialising in teaching poetry. She is the author of The Poetry Toolkit: The Essential Guide to Studying Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2nd Ed. 2013), which appears on many reading lists in the UK and USA

Professor Kevin Tipton – School of Sport, University of Stirling.Experiences with flipping large sports science classroomsI will discuss some methods that I’ve used in sports science classes to enhance learning despite increasing number of students. These methods are designed to provide an interactive learning environment for students in large classrooms. The basis for these sessions are video lectures that are uploaded onto Succeed. In class, I have used Peer Instruction and Think-Pair-Share and other methods. Finally, I have used Twitter to stimulate critical evaluation of research papers.

Kevin Tipton is a Professor of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences at the University of Stirling in Scotland. His research is focused on exercise, nutrition and muscle metabolism. He is an author of over 80 papers, book chapters and review articles. His interest in exercise nutrition extends to application of the science to athletic populations. He served on the USA Committee for Military Nutrition Research and helped develop sports nutrition consensus statements for the IOC, FIFA, FINA and IAAF and has served on the UK Sport Nutritional Supplements Advisory Board. When not working he enjoys walking the hills and muirs with his dog, Reiver.

Dr Tim Whalley – Dean of Students, University of Stirling.

Ms Hollie Cameron – VP Education, Students’ Union

Dr Eddy Moran – School of Education, University of Stirling.Is It Real Teaching? Post-Graduate Students’ Perceptions and Use of Online Video TutorialsThis presentation reports a small scale study funded by SELF of post-graduate students’ perceptions of online video tutorials compared to face to face lectures, their use of the videos and the learning strategies they employed while watching them. Data was collected from online tracking of user-interaction, usage statistics collected by Succeed, and semi-structured interviews. Findings suggest that while learners recognise and value the strengths of online delivery of teaching input and interact with the material in purposeful ways, they also recognise and value the social interaction of face to face teaching and learning

Eddy Moran is a teaching fellow specializing in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) in the TESOL unit of the School of Education. He also contributes to courses on TESOL theory and methodology and language assessment. His research interests are language learners’ epistemologies of learning, learner interaction with CALL software, and the application of blended learning for taught postgraduates, particularly the use of online video.

This workshop takes ‘Flipping’ to mean any activity that replaces a traditional lecture with an activity designed to improve student learning. We don’t simply mean replacing a lecture with a Listen Again recording but any prior activity undertaken with the purpose of making the lecture time more valuable for student learning. Come along and listen to a range of perspectives on flipping and ways to flip from staff at Stirling and elsewhere.

This means that when using an anonymous assignment (i.e. the student names are not revealed until the post date) it is now possible to send an email to ALL students that have failed to submit work (including any with extensions).